Date of Award
7-7-2020
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
English Language, Literature, and Creative Writing
Supervisor
Nicole Markotic
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Imaginary Ancestors” is a short story collection of historiographic metafiction that follows a colonial family’s journey in New France and later Canada, bound tightly with the fate of a species of magic pear trees. Each story represents a moment in the life of one of the narrator’s kin, focusing chiefly on the first of his ancestors in the Americas—a farmer named Marin. As Marin’s story, both real and imagined, unfolds, the narrator confronts the dichotomy between the oral tradition his family has sustained through the centuries, and the lack of corroborating sources in the historiography. As the narrator grapples with gaps in his historical records, he is helped— and hindered—by the ghost of an ancestor, whose pressure for accuracy begins to conflict with the family legend that serves as the narrator’s obsession. Utilising the flaws and holes in the historical sources he possesses, the narrator writes his own past into the blank spaces around him, creating, and codifying his own “Imaginary Ancestors.
Recommended Citation
Deneau, Derek, "Imaginary Ancestors" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 8356.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/8356